Cellular communication networks evolve towards higher data rates, improved capacity and coverage. In the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardization body, several technologies have been and are also currently being developed.
LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a recent standardised technology. It uses an access technology based on OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) for the downlink and Single Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) for the uplink. The resource allocation to wireless devices (also known as user equipment, UEs) on both downlink and uplink is generally performed adaptively using fast scheduling, taking into account the instantaneous traffic pattern and radio propagation characteristics of each wireless device.
LTE is one example of a fourth generation (4G) network. However, LTE is not deployed everywhere, whereby wireless devices that support LTE still connect to third generation (3G) networks, such as W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiplex), and even second generation (2G) networks when there is no LTE coverage. In this way, the wireless device can still communicate even when there is not LTE coverage.
However, since capacity varies greatly over time and with movement of the wireless device, when a user is actively transferring data e.g. by streaming a video download, the data capacity can limit the user experience when capacity varies, e.g. causing freezing in the video download or even causing the video download session to disconnect.